The Bible is full of images, stories, and illustrations of what Christian life is all about. For example, we are known to be part of "the Army of God". We are ambassadors of Jesus Christ, we are a building that is built in the likeness of Christ and we are branches and Jesus Christ is the Vine. However, my favorite analogy compares Christian living to running a race, Paul uses the running and racing image in at least nine of his epistles. And you know, it is easy to start a race; but it is something else to finish one. Whatever we started in 2009 (or 2008 for that matter) we ought to strive to finish it, that's what is wrong with some of us in the church. I am finding in the Body of Christ that we don't have many people who finish.
In fact, we have a generation of people who are not finishers. We have a generation of fathers who walk off and don't finish raising their kids, we have people who join a church and make a good start but something happened along the way. They don't finish, maybe they're angry with the pastor or something? I heard someone say, "I left because I wasn't being fed" and my answer was, maybe it wasn't that you weren't being fed it could also be that you didn't want to eat. We (some of us) are not finishers, people don't want to finish being single and so they get married; but they married too soon and as a result they don't finish being married because they file for divorce. Yes, we live in a society where it is much easier to just stop and leave things incomplete. I am a firm believer that anything that involves a struggle is worth completing. Don't want to deal with incompleteness, when it comes to life, we ought not throw in the towel because that's dangerous, when it comes to being a servant of God it is extremely dangerous to decide against finishing this race. 1 Corinthians 9: 24 says, "...in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize. Run in such a way as to get the prize."
Posted By: DAVID JOHNSON
Tuesday, July 27th 2010 at 7:26PM
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